ILLINOIS DIVORCE LAW BLOG

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2016 brings to Illinois a revised and amended Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act. The new Act brings some substantive changes to the way that divorce and custody is adjudicated in Illinois, but the guideline advice for preparing for a divorce remains steady. If you find yourself headed for divorce, you should consider taking the following steps to protect and prepare yourself:

Know Your Assets & Debts – Make an effort to summarize your important assets and debts, and if you have been kept in the dark about what your marriage holds by way of assets and retirement plans, talk to my firm about the use of discovery at the beginning of your case to get at these items. If you have assets that you owned before the marriage, or that were acquired by way of inheritance or estate plan gifting, be sure to segregate these gifts or bequests from your “marital basket” of accounts.

Maintain Behavioral Balance – In other words, don’t make impulsive changes or purchases, or begin a path of active dating while the divorce is in process. Starting a divorce case puts each party under the view and control of the Court; this can be an advantage in gaining control over, for example, assets being wasted by the other spouse, but this change also puts a premium on good behavior. Don’t use social media as a confessional or bully pulpit to bash your spouse. Check the security of your email and social media accounts, and if you have any doubts about the integrity of your email, talk with my firm about steps you can take to prevent keystroke logging ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_logging ) or email hacking.

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Thoughts from Law Offices of Michael F Roe as 2015 winds to a close:

2015 has been a year of successes for clients, and challenges in Illinois divorce practice, with some of the challenges including managing the maintenance statute (the statutory guideline formula) that caused a radical change in how support is calculated for incomes below a benchmark amount of $250,000.00

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2016 will bring us substantial changes to the practice of divorce and custody law. I use the term “custody” despite the fact that the new IMDMA has done away with the terms “custody” and “visitation” and now instructs the Court to determine “allocation of parental responsibilities,” along with allocations of parenting time for the parents and children. Other new rules affect relocation within the state of Illinois; previously, a residential parent could relocate anywhere within the state with the children after a divorce, sometimes wreaking havoc on the nonresidential parent’s access to the children.

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I am always careful to identify good articles on the emerging clinical science behind Parental Alienation. Here’s an excellent review by Dr. Kruk for your consideration.

Credit: Edward Kruk Ph.D.

Recent Advances in Understanding Parental Alienation Implications of Parental Alienation Research for Family-Based Intervention

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I represented this year a Father who was facing what is called a “termination of parental rights” in court, due to actions that the Mother of the children had taken. Sometimes, if one parent neglects the child or children, both parents can be found to be jointly responsible and the courts can take action to terminate the rights of the parents.

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I was told at the outset of the case that the State’s Attorneys never lose these cases; in a sense, once the boulder starts to roll, there is no way to stop it. A week before the trial, I met my client at the courthouse, and I told him that I wanted to fight this termination case. I felt it was wrong to deprive a good Dad of his rights as a Father, only due to the failures of his partner in parenthood. I had been warned by many, including lawyers watching the case, that the State never loses these kinds of cases.

I told my client at our meeting that I wanted to take the case to trial. I wanted to resist the efforts of the State to terminate his rights. My client, a good man and a good Father, agreed to fight. He knew the downsides if he fought and lost, for at that point the court would adjudicate him as having lost his parental rights. He could agree to sign away his rights, and hope to get some visitation rights, but to go to trial meant adjudication.

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I spent some time yesterday in discussion with some other experienced divorce attorneys concerning the changes in the divorce laws in Illinois that become effective as of January 1, 2016. The consensus view is that there is no consensus about how these new provisions to the IMDMA will affect divorce and custody litigants with pending cases as of January 1, and with new cases filed in the new year. Some lawyers see the changes as needed change, and others see the changes as confusing and likely to increase litigation.

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Here are but a few of the key changes that shall become new law as of 2016:

– There will one ground for dissolution of marriage – irreconcilable differences. Gone is the requirement that fault (such as “mental cruelty”) be proved in contested cases.

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Illinois law is about to change with respect to divorce and custody. Put simply, SB57 is the Illinois legislature’s effort, effective January 1, 2016, to change the way that divorce and custody litigation is conducted in Illinois. But, as the old saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” and such may the case with this sweeping new law.

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As many other states have done for years, Illinois law now rejects determinations of fault (such as adultery or mental cruelty) in divorce. More importantly, SB57 does away with terms like “custody” and ‘visitation” and now requires the court to determine “parenting allocation,” though the court is still required to determine which parent will have the primary residence of the children, as well as assign the obligation for the payment of child support to one parent.

While other states have crafted more modern laws that allocate between parents both parenting time and financial responsibility, Illinois’ new law still has inappropriate vestiges of the old custody, visitation, and child support law. As the law changes, parents in divorce beginning in Fall of 2015 will need to be mindful of the new laws and their effects.

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Excerpted from psychcentral.com: Are You Ready For Divorce? 7 Questions To Ask Yourself

” This article outlines what couples need to do to face the numerous dilemmas associated with divorce. But first, they must identify their unique dilemma. Couples facing the possibility of a divorce face one of these three dilemmas:

* I want the divorce but I am not sure if it is the right decision. Since going through a divorce impacts the lives of your children as well as your lifestyle, economics, and marital investment, the pressure to make the “perfectly correct” decision is enormous.

* I do not want the divorce but my spouse does. Being in this reactive place will leave you feeling out of control and helpless. You will experience intense emotional devastation as your life will be changing before your eyes without you having any say in the outcome. In addressing this dilemma, you need to ask yourself if you are clinging to familiar, safe ground and to a marriage based on illusions. It is not easy to acknowledge and confront the problems in a marriage, especially when you are feeling so hurt by your partner.

* I only want this divorce because my marriage is not working. There will be tremendous preoccupation and anger about how your partner caused you to make this decision. The amount of noise generated from this blaming will be in direct proportion to your unwillingness to risk expressing any of your own fears and sadness. If this doesn’t occur, the divorce proceedings to follow will be riddled with tension and conflict as well as a continuation of the blaming.

The common element in all three dilemmas is fear. Victims of the first dilemma fear making a mistake. Victims of the second dilemma fear their own attachment to the familiar. The third group of victims fear accountability and softness. All three result in divorces that are combative and drag on and on, sometimes for years on end.” Credit: http://psychcentral.com/blog Continue reading →

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From an interview with Dr. Amy Baker, PA expert:

” I must admit I am a bit disappointed in the comments so far on the WDET website in response to my interview. I hate to see the conversation devolve into a gender war when the research is so clear that both mothers and fathers can be alienators. I would prefer to see attention focused on prevention (education of custody evaluators about differentiating alienation from estrangement, training attorneys in proper handling of these cases, and so forth). There is so much to agree on! See http://wdet.org/posts/2015/07/17/81018-what-is-parental-alienation-syndrome/

..and my response to those commentators questioning Dr. Baker’s approach:

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The case involving the Michigan judge that placed three children in juvenile hall as a punishment and coercive measure has been roundly criticized for using contempt proceedings, in what even the judge agreed is a longstanding Parental Alienation case. From a local Detroit newspaper account:

Three Bloomfield Hills kids who refused an order by a judge to go to lunch with their father have been ordered to a juvenile detention facility.The Tsimhoni family was in Oakland County’s family court for a hearing on supervised parenting time when Judge Lisa Gorcyca took matters into her own hands.

June 24 court transcripts showed how upset the judge was. She ordered the Tsimhoni kids ages 14,10 and 9 to have a “healthy relationship” with their father. She criticized them for avoiding him and even compared them to Charles Manson and his cult. Gorcyca then ordered the children to apologize and have a nice lunch with their dad. When they refused, Gorcyca held them in contempt and had each child hauled off to Children’s Village’s juvenile hall – until they are 18 years old.

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